Avad
Avad, referred to ceremonially as His Radiance Avad, 14th in the Line of Luminance, is the 14th Sun-King of the Carja Sundom. Unlike his father Jiran, he is a compassionate and just ruler who desires a working relationship with other tribes based on mutual respect. Revulsed by and tired of his father’s manifold atrocities, he successfully overthrew Jiran, being forced to kill him when he would not surrender. Background Avad is the second of Jiran’s three children, all male. His mother’s name is unknown. Before him, she bore his older brother Kadaman. His younger brother prince Itamen, Jiran’s youngest child, is in fact his half-brother by Jiran’s second wife Nasadi. History Jiran’s Tyranny Avad grew up in the royal palace in the Carja capital Meridian with Kadaman. It may be presumed that, as they grew to adulthood, both princes witnessed the degeneration of their father from a respected leader to a megalomaniacal, paranoid tyrant. When Jiran ordered the Red Raids and blood sacrifices in the Sun-Ring, both princes were appalled. Indeed, Avad brought salvation to one of the victims, an Oseram woman named Ersa, after she had managed to survive the Sun-Ring. Jiran, impressed despite his cruelty, made her a palace slave. Avad befriended her and subsequently helped her escape back to her tribe’s territory, The Claim. This act of kindness would subsequently prove of great benefit.The Liberation Kadaman’s Execution The bloodshed eventually became so unbearable to the princes’ consciences that Kadaman, as the crown prince, demanded of Jiran that the raids and sacrifices cease. Jiran did not spare members of his house his wrath should they oppose him; he had Kadaman thrown into the Sun-Ring as punishment. This was the proverbial last straw for Avad; he knew then that the only way to stop the atrocities was to depose Jiran. He therefore formulated a plan to do so. The Alliance Avad first spoke to the soldiers of his honor guard. To a man, they were all as sick of Jiran’s atrocities as he was. The very night after Kadaman’s execution, they all fled Meridian and headed north for The Claim. Jiran was furious, and the next morning he declared Avad a traitor, marked for death. In The Claim, Avad again met Ersa, the palace slave he had helped escape. She and her brother Erend had developed connections to the many Oseram freebooters who defended the tribe’s settlements against the Carja. Avad asked her to help him ally these groups with his men. She and Erend agreed, and so Avad raised the army he needed to force Jiran off the throne. He also had help from within Meridian, in the form of the spymaster Marad. Presumably, Marad aided him by ensuring that word of Avad’s impending invasion never got to Jiran until it was too late to mount any broad military defense against it. The Liberation After months of preparation, the alliance marched on Meridian. As they advanced deeper into the Sundom, any Carja soldiers who encountered them fled back to the city, laid down their arms or joined them. Thus more and more Carja soldiers joined, until the alliance was comprised of most of the Carja army. Avad knew Jiran would never surrender, and that the resulting fighting between Jiran’s loyalists and dissidents among the civilian population could tear Meridian apart. He hoped that most of the civilian population were in favor of Jiran’s overthrow and would accept him as Sun-King because he was of the Radiant Line and the belief that the Sun had rejected him due to his atrocities. Upon reaching the walls of the city, the alliance faced a defending force composed of Jiran’s fanatically loyal Kestrels and the relatively few Carja soldiers who remained loyal to Jiran. The defenders were prepared to fight to the death in a long siege in the face of the alliance’s arrows and Blast Bombs, but the alliance had a decisive military advantage in the form of new weapons that made a long siege unnecessary: Oseram Cannons. These weapons quickly destroyed the main gates and killed the defenders on the walls. Avad strictly limited the use of these weapons in order to preserve the city’s infrastructure as much as possible. One group of liberators scaled and secured the the temple, another secured the palace aqueducts and the bulk of the force entered the city through the main gates. Among the civilian population, there was indeed fighting, but as Avad hoped, most of the population sided with him accepting him as the Sun-King, and the loyalists fled. Jiran knew he was defeated but, as Avad predicted, refused to surrender. He ordered his champion, the Kestrel commander Helis, to take his queen Nasadi and youngest son Itamen away from the city to his summer palace at Sunfall. With them went Jiran’s loyalists: the surviving Kestrels, Sun-Priests and nobles, along with their slaves. They established a splinter tribe known as the Shadow Carja with Sunfall as their capital. The two most senior Jiran loyalists, Helis and the High Priest Bahavas, declared Itamen to be the true Sun-King, though he was but a child, and they held de facto power. However this was not the end of the conflict. While a ceasefire between the two sides went into effect, Helis and Bahavas never stopped seeking a way to retake the Sundom in Jiran’s name. Eventually they were deceived into forming the cult known as the Eclipse with the intention of doing just that. Reforms and Diplomacy With his Liberation successful, Avad immediately set about undoing the social and political damage Jiran had inflicted on the tribe. Domestically, he outlawed slavery and mistreatment of the underclass. He ordered the Hunters Lodge to remove its restrictions against non-Carja, women and non-nobles. Militarily, he ended the Red Raids and expelled participating soldiers and officers from the army, though some, such as the officer Zaid, managed to remain by covering up their involvement. He also began a diplomatic program of outreach and apology to the tribes his father had terrorized, and . He particularly made efforts to restore trade and peaceful relations with the Nora, whose territory abutted the Sundom in the east. At the Carja settlement Daytower, beyond which was Nora territory, he assigned a commander named Balahn, an army captain who was part of his alliance, and who strongly believed in his reforms and was determined to do his best to improve relations with the Nora. He sent a delegation to the tribe in time to witness their Proving ceremony and rite. However an attack on the tribe curtailed the effort and forced the delegation to return to Meridian early. This fallout from this attack led to him meeting one particular Nora whom he would come to highly respect and value as an ally, and who would repeatedly aid Meridian, to the point of twice saving it from destruction: the huntress Aloy. He also maintained and strengthened ties with the Oseram, the tribe that allied with him to depose Jiran. He commissioned the freebooters who fought alongside him into an elite unit known as the Vanguard. Unlike Jiran’s Kestrels, who were loyal to Jiran personally, the Vanguard serves the throne, as opposed to the throne’s occupant. Ersa was its captain, and Erend her second in command. Avad grew to depend on her greatly to help manage relations with the Oseram. Indeed, They became enamored of each other. But they could not start a relationship due to the non-acceptance of such a union by the carja people. Ersa was subsequently murdered, much to Avad’s grief. Dervahl The aforementioned attack on the Nora was perpetrated by the Eclipse, a secret cult of the Shadow Carja led by Helis. Aloy went to Meridian, following a lead on their identity. Her arrival coincided with Ersa’s murder. The perpetrators were believed to be the Shadow Carja. Aloy investigated soon after her arrival, and discovered that she had in fact been kidnapped the Oseram warlord Dervahl. Dervahl had a genocidal hatred of the Carja due to Jiran’s execution of Dervahl’s wife and child in the Sun-Ring. He consequently hated Avad for killing Jiran before he could do so. As for Ersa, he hated her for working with Avad, and because he himself had become enamored of her, but she rejected him due to his genocidal intent toward the Carja. Aloy met Avad after she made the discovery, and reported it to him. Avad fervently hoped that Ersa was still alive. But his hopes were dashed when she subsequently died at Dervahl’s camp from being tortured. Aloy found evidence at the camp that Dervahl was planning a terrorist bombing of Meridian that would cause extremely high casualties. Dervahl indeed set up the bomb, then infiltrated the palace and incapacitated Avad along with Erend and Marad. Aloy ultimately defeated him, leading to his arrest by the Vanguard. Avad was deeply grateful to her for saving his life, saving the city and for the closure he found in knowing what had actually happened to Ersa. Family Reunion Avad encountered Aloy again when she assisted in the successful defection of Jiran’s widow Queen Nasadi and their son Itamen, Avad’s half-brother, from Sunfall. A Carja spy named Vanasha had long been placed in Sunfall by Marad, and had convinced Nasadi to defect with Itamen. The de facto rulers of the Shadow Carja, Helis and Bahavas, claimed Itamen to be the one true Sun-King as Jiran’s chosen heir, and thus the Shadow Carja were the true Carja tribe. His defection to the Carja and acceptance of Avad as Sun-King would destroy these claims. Aloy worked with Vanasha to successfully accomplish the defection. Avad received his step-mother and half-brother on their arrival, and was again deeply grateful to Aloy for her help. The Two Battle for Meridian The third and final known time that Avad encountered Aloy was after she had discovered the origins of the Eclipse. The cult was actually in service to an ancient artificial intelligence called HADES. The AI was using the Eclipse as its unwitting pawns by which it would take control of the Spire, the ancient monument whose discovery led to the siting of Meridian near its location. The Spire was actually one of a global network of transmission towers which HADES intended to use to reactivate the Faro Plague, a locust-like army of war automatons that exterminated life on earth, obliterating the ancient world. HADES intended to allow the Plague to exterminate life permanently. Aloy went to Avad and informed him of what she had learned. Though Avad had difficulty conceiving such a thing, he trusted her completely, and put her in charge of defenses. Warriors from the Nora, Oseram and Banuk all came to join the effort out of the great respect they had for Aloy due to their encounters with her. Avad received them, though the Nora understandably refused his audience. Together, the assembled alliance ultimately defeated the Eclipse and Aloy permanently terminated HADES’ ability to reactivate the Faro Plague, though, unknown to her, she did not destroy the AI. Avad and Marad joined in the victory cheer from the palace balcony. In a reaction that illustrated his attire toward his subjects, he spontaneously hugged a very surprised soldier. Personality Avad is the polar opposite of Jiran; just and compassionate, with a respect for all tribes and their peoples. Whereas his father would shed blood at any slight, Avad gives diplomacy every reasonable opportunity to succeed before resorting to arms. He seeks peaceful, mutually beneficial relations between the Carja and other tribes, and seeks to eventually change Carja culture into one that is classless and non-patriarchal. However, as befits realistic, rational thinking, he does not expect these changes to happen quickly. Nor does he expect similar changes with regard to the relationship between the Carja and other tribes, given the understandable lingering animosity toward the Carja due to his father’s reign of terror. Indeed, some tribal leaders such as the Banuk chieftain Aratak fully expect the Carja to seek war again. However Avad intends to keep trying to bring these changes about, mainly through using his rule as an example. He is known and respected for having freed his people from his father’s despotic rule and freed the the other tribes from being terrorized by his father. Indeed, in the written records of the Sun-Kings, his record, following immediately after the despotic, blood-soaked reign of his father, simply describes him in two words: The Liberator.The Sun-Kings Associated Quests * The Face of Extinction * Into the Borderlands * The Looming Shadow * The Sun Shall Fall * Queen's Gambit Gallery IMG 0222.JPG|Concept art of Avad Avad and Oseram.png|Avad screenshot References uk:Авад Category:Sun-Kings Category:Carja Tribe Members